TURNING TRAUMA INTO SUPERPOWER: Steven Twohig’s Journey Through Shadow Work and Transformation!

You know you need something, you're just not sure what. You've been listening, you're doing the work, but there's still this feeling that you're circling the same place, like you're waiting for the thing that finally moves you. Now maybe you've thought about working with me one-on-one. Maybe something's held you back, the timing, the money, or you're just not sure you're ready yet.

I get that.

And I want you to know there's still a place for you. I built a resource for exactly this moment, guided meditations for when the waves hit and you just need to breathe. Workbooks to help you get out of your head and onto the page, ebooks on what near-death experiences tell us about the people we've lost, and whether they're really gone, a full course for widows and widowers who are ready to find their way back to living, and a full course for the evidence of the afterlife. And all of it is available for pay what you want. Nobody gets turned away because of money. I think these resources are valuable, but I don't want to hold them back because you don't have the money to pay for them. You don't have to wait until you're ready for coaching. The next step might be a lot smaller than you think. To find out, go to grief2growth.com/store. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/store. And check out the resources I've made for you.

Hi there, welcome to Grief to Growth Podcast. Your host is Brian D Smith, spiritual seeker, bestselling author, grief survivor, and life coach. Brian believes that the worst tragedies of life provide the greatest opportunity for growth. Brian D Smith says he was planted, not buried, and he is here to help you grow where you've been planted by the difficulties in life. In each episode, Brian and his guests will share what has helped them to survive and thrive. It is his sincere hope this episode helps you today.

Hey everybody, this is Brian back with another episode of Grief to Growth. And today I've got with me a fascinating man. His name is Stephen Tuigg. And I know we're going to have an energetic conversation. It's early on Monday morning. It's 9 o'clock on Monday. It's the day after Father's Day. Stephen's also a father. So we just been catching up on what it's like to be a father. We'll incorporate some of that in this too. But Stephen is the founder of Mastering Change. He's committed himself to mastering the art of transformation. While he was seeking to heal from the trauma inflicted while he was just a toddler, he was introduced to the practice of shadow work in April 2020— 2000. Which led to a lifelong study of what he believes is his path to enlightenment. He spent a decade working for and studying under the world's leading business and life strategist, Tony Robbins. He, he wanted to blend shadow work with business strategy integration and implementation. Tony commissioned him to interview over 10,000 business leaders worldwide to determine what made them successful and helped thousands transform their businesses to be more productive and strategic. He's currently studying the impact of shadow work on psychedelic integration. He focuses on bridging the gap between traditional plant medicine and the Western mind, intending to bring the insights and innovation that plant medicine provides to everyone who wants to be— who wants more out of their lives. He believes that we are finally on the cusp of proper mental health, which will spur global innovation, and I hope he's right about that. Stephen is an international speaker. He's traveled worldwide teaching a blend of strategy, shadow work, and spirituality. He has extensive study in mindfulness, mindset, business optimization, shadow work, and facilitation. Neurolinguistic Programming, hypnotherapy, group dynamics, peak performance, leadership dynamics, and unconscious communications. And through his work, he's formed a specific framework for understanding the human experience, and he's currently training other guides to spread the practice. So with that, I want to bring in Stephen Tuohy.

How's it going, brother?

Good, Stephen. It's great to have you here. I was— we were just catching up a little bit before we got started. I'm like, I need to hit the record button and capture some of this. You're You're a fantastic, dynamic person. I want to really pick your brain today for some of your wisdom. We're talking about traumatic experiences. And we, you know, I've gone through a traumatic experience in my life much later than yours. But you under— I understand, had a traumatic experience early in your life. And so tell me how that influenced you to get into this work.

Well, it— what I believe, the way, the way that I'm understanding the mind works, It's impacted everything that I've done after that. You know, when I was 3 years old, my stepmother physically tortured me. My mother was attempted rape on her while she was going to work and so they cut her hands open. She couldn't take care of— at that time she had 3 kids and so she gave up my youngest sister for adoption to my uncle and my sister and I went to go live with my dad who was married to another woman and— wow! Why is this so heavy all of a sudden? Interesting! That's chewy, Brian! So, you know, I'm 3 years old, it's pre-verbal, right? And you know, I can remember my dad getting up in the morning. I distinctly remember this one moment where my dad got up and came out. I was excited! It was early morning. I remember it being dark, brightish kind of thing. It was like one of those dark moments that I knew that the light was coming. He came out, he was in a great mood. "Give me a hug, buddy! Glad you're here!" I remember him complimenting me on the hugs and then I remember him leaving. I can remember it was in a basement apartment because he had to go up the stairs. I remember he was on a motorcycle. I thought that was really cool at the time because it was really loud. What is this contraption kind of thing? And then I remember leaving. I remember walking back in, the screen door closing, and then everything kind of goes dark. I can remember the couch being about here to my waist or to my shoulder, to my chest. I can remember visual images of this little one-bedroom apartment that he seemed to be living in, and I don't remember anything else. That's the way I lived most of my life and just not remembering and then I went through some work where I got in touch with what that was and at 3 years old, I was physically tortured by my stepmother. She would pull all my hair out. She would beat me. She would starve me and then she would lock me in the basement. Apparently, I look like my mom and I would sit in there all day and then she would let me out. She said, "If you say anything, I'll kill you and your sister both!" My oldest sister who was with me. And again, pre-verbal, 3 years old. This is pre— I don't have any language to explain. I can't go to mom and say, "Mom, I'm being locked in the basement!" because I don't know how to talk and, "Oh, by the way, you'll die if you do!" So, I'm completely frozen. When they finally got me away, the prevalent theory at the time as a parent and again, we're all amateur parents. So, the prevailing idea at the time was, "Well, don't— just don't say anything!" and it'll go away, you know what I mean? So now, I'm pre-verbal so I can't explain it and I'm in a situation where the adults have been trained or have been programmed to not say anything. So now, there's this feeling of you at any given time because at 3 years old, mom and dad are God. At any given time, you could get locked into this basement. So what happens when something like this happens, when trauma comes online, there's this like— some people call it a split, some people call it— it's kind of like when you go, you know, when you go to the gym and you work out, and you get this kink in your muscle. Well, everything is fractal. Everything is a visual representation of something else. So you have your mental mind and then you have your body mind, your physical mind. The physical mind, you get these— yes? Okay! Well, that would also happen in the mind. So, there's this moment in time that— you know, and I locked into it. "Oh! I'm in the basement!

Let me out!

Let me out!

Let me out!" Right?

And so my mind, what it does is it drops a pin right there. Boom! This does not ever happen to this entity and then the ego comes online and starts watching for this, like a record player just running in the background, always watching this point of reference. You know, when in the military we were always taught when we're on the tank, you want 3 points of reference. You want your 2 feet, you always need that third thing just in case something moves, you're safe, right? Well, in consciousness it's much the same way. I've got— now I've got this point of reference Right? I can make decisions based upon what could happen and my mind, seeing is believing, believing is seeing. So, I walk into a situation and I go, "Okay, who's trying to trap me?" The only problem is, now I'm a 40-year-old man. I'm not in Florida. I'm a 40-year-old man or I'm not in the basement. I'm a 40-year-old man trapped in Florida that's talking to his wife about taxes but I feel like I'm a 3-year-old boy trapped in a basement and I don't know it.

Yeah!

Right? This is how most of the world is walking around. They're asleep at the wheel and they don't even know it. They're reliving trauma that they've unconsciously been programmed to avoid and it's— and they're recreating that same cycle. The National Science Foundation says 95% of your thoughts are repetitive. You're thinking that, I mean, just look at your life. You're thinking the same thoughts over and over and over. Well, 80% of them thoughts are negative. Like, they're based upon awfulizing attack thoughts, negative bias. Like, there's 24 cognitive biases that the mind deals with whenever it's trying to process information. Most of the time, the mind is built for meaning but it's been hijacked for survival. So most of your thoughts are based upon trying to survive some T-Rex that's never going to come.

Yeah! Yeah!

And mine was based upon that being trapped in the basement. So, You know, if I told you right now, Brian D Smith, just look around the room. Like, look around the room just for a couple seconds. Look around the room, find a color red. See that? If you're on— if you're listening on this, look around the room right now, find the color red. Look, look, look! Red, red, red, red, red, red! Now keep looking, keep looking. Now close your eyes. How much stuff did you see that was blue? Well, you didn't see anything was blue because you weren't looking for blue. And the mind sees what it— seeing isn't believing, believing is seeing, right? So your mind sees— I— where they try— oh, this person is this, and what's wrong is always available. You know what I mean? So now I've got a hook to lay this— we call it a projection in shadow work— we got a hook to lay this projection on. And then I go, well, you just think that— so, you know, when I'm coaching a client, be like, well, you think this is going on? Oh yeah! And they'll give me the reason why they think this is happening. Like, yeah, the reason is true. Typically it's always true. Like, there's always a hook though, right? What's wrong is always available, but so is what's right. Right? But I choose to look for the negative because that's what the brain says— survive. 3.5 million years of survive. I mean, most of our life as humans, we were food. Like, on a good day, you got some extra berries. On a bad day, game over, you know? Thanks for playing, right? That was— and it was, it was like that many, many lifetimes. Like, you know, 70, 80, 90 lifetimes before you, the mind that is, that is in Brian D Smith, that, that version, version 3,456,000,000, whatever, you know, whatever version of the mind you're in, right? And it— and somebody was grown and they had a baby and then they passed on that information. That baby rose up, then another baby, then another baby, all the way to you came up. And then you're bubbling. The only place where this story exists of what the world is, is for you, is in your head. Nobody else has the same story. Everybody else has a completely different story where they are the hero of their journey. You think of the hero's journey and somehow I think, what I think is really amazing, somehow your crazy story and you know, your kids, your wife, your coworkers, your whoever you come interacting, your crazy story and their crazy story somehow, I call it shadowboxing, it just lines right up and we tell each other completely different crazy stories but somehow the crazy stories seem, they just seem to line up in our minds. I think that's God! I think it points to God. I'm like, there's no way that my crazy story that I have— because I'm crazy up here, it's, it's, it don't go up there without a flashlight kind of thing. I'm crazy up there. And so it's like, I— how did my crazy story— and I know that you're just as probably just as crazy as I am, and somehow our stories are just going to line right up and they're going to be, oh yeah, that's right. And, and we go— both could be just completely off.

Yeah. Yeah, we do. You know, I think you just gave a really good, great description of trauma, how we lock in the trauma, and how it's typically subconscious for most of us. We never go back and evaluate it. And so we live in this story where that thing that happened to us when we were 3 or 5 or whatever, we're constantly trying to avoid that. And we're projecting it out into the world. And I think about this in relationships. I'm in even now, you know, you go back to you're talking to your wife and you know, you're like you said, you're coming at it like you're the 3-year-old and she's like looking at you like you're a 40-year-old man.

Stay with us.

We'll be right back.

You know, one of the hardest things about grief, most of the people in your life just don't get it. They want you to be further along than you are. They get uncomfortable when you bring it up. So you stop bringing it up. And that's why I started writing. My Substack is where I go deeper. Thoughts I don't always get to on the podcast. Essays on consciousness, on continuing bonds, on what it actually means to carry a loss and still build a life. The stuff that used to keep me up at night, written out in a way that I hope meets you in the morning. But here's what I didn't expect when I started it. The community that showed up. People who are doing exactly what you're doing. Listening, learning, trying to find their footing. Readers who comment, who share their own stories, who remind each other that none of us are as alone in this as we feel. And that's what the Substack has become— a place to go deeper with me and to find your people. It's free to subscribe. Find me at grief2growth.com/substack. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/substack. Or just go to Substack and search for Grief to Growth.

I hope to see you there.

I'll tell— I'll give you a prime example because people need to understand. This is the other one, the one of the other things for those of your listeners that are actual shadow work practitioners. There's a common misconception that once I solve the problem, it's solved. I have a 3-year-old that's trapped in my body that is trapped in a basement. Period! Right? That 3-year-old could come out anytime, at any time. You could say, "Da da da da da!" going down the steps and that could trigger in me that feeling and it's a feeling of compression. It starts off, it's right here in my chest. It feels first off like I've lost my— I can't breathe! "Oh man! Why can't I breathe? Why do I feel out of breath?" That little boy is pushing up against me going, "Shut up, Steven! Shut up!" You know, he's starting to feel like he's trapped so he'll come online and he'll start putting pressure on me to just just get small, get tiny, get small really quick because you're going in the basement. And so, as a shadow guy, we need to remember that those are always in front of us. My wife is— she's— I call her the Angel of Death, right? Because she's the— she's a hospice nurse, right? To give you clarification, she's a hospice nurse and she's not a hospice nurse, she's 15 years in the industry. She got her master's degree, she's working on her PhD. We're thinking about doing psychedelic-assisted end of life care. Like, she's the hospice nurse! Like, she's the angel that you hope shows up when you're dying! She's— when I say "angel of death," there's a reason for that. I'm not just— because she's my wife, you know? No, no! She's the angel! Like, she's an angel! Like, and so she's got this, you know, we're constantly doing work, constantly doing work, constantly doing work. Well, she's had this shadow that she's been working on. She just could not get around it and a couple weeks ago, she finally got it. It was terrible! It's just that easy. Terrible! And so, imagine if everything in your life were just filtered with terrible. It's like you walk in the room, you go "How is—" and as a nurse, she's addicted. She's become addicted to be terrible because as a nurse, I gotta understand what the worst case scenario is so that I can keep that from happening. And so, her mind had gotten programmed into what's the worst thing? What could happen? What could happen? What could happen? Well, we forget over time that we get locked in that and we just keep going out of it. Shadow work isn't about you going in and fixing it, although you— it could feel like that because when you come out of a point where you're suffering, it feels much like a pop. It's like, "Ah! Everything will make sense! No wonder why I did that! No wonder why this! No wonder that!" Like, you get clarity. It's instant "aha!" moment. We call them "wow" moments because people go, "Wow!" and all, like, you know, all of a sudden they'll get it, right? But then you have to do the integration on the back end. You got to continually maintain it. It's not shadow work as in shadow's gone. You got to keep your shadow out in front of you, right? So, it's about finding out where am I trapped? And you said— one other thing you mentioned was you said, "Well, trauma." This isn't just trauma. This is the way the mind works. Like, trauma is like anybody that's listening here is like, "Well, I don't have any trauma." Well, no, no, no! Trauma for us, those of us that have been traumatized, those of us— and I don't know that there's a planet— I haven't run into one person that hasn't got some form of trauma. But what trauma allowed me to do is it allowed me to see how my mind was coded. Yeah! That's it! This— everybody's mind operates like this. It's not just the trauma folks, it's everybody. Us trauma folks are required, we're not given a pass that my trauma is so great, my lie is so great that I'm forced to continually look at that lie and go, "Is it true?" Yeah! Because the first rule of shadow work is that we lie to ourselves first. That's the first rule. We lie to ourselves first.

What you just said is beautiful, and I wonder— I want to just re-emphasize that for people because you're right. I think trauma is the thing that triggers us to have to change it. It drives us to the point where we can't survive like this anymore, so we have to do something else. But we all have this, and I want to, I want to make sure we normalize. We all have the shadow stuff. We all have these lies that we tell ourselves. We all have, it's a normal part of being a human being and I think sometimes people feel guilty or like, "There's something wrong with me!" We all have it. Some of us just hide it better than other people do.

Yeah! Well, and here's the interesting thing! So again, with my wife, the word is terrible, right? And so, it's like you get— she'll get her— you— once the ego— what the ego does is the ego, it just expands. It continually is an— it's an ever-expanding let's call it a software application because that's what it really is. It's not real! The you that you think is you is not really the you that you are. It's just a small piece of you. It's like the bright light in the middle of this giant dark room. You're the little bright area, 1% of the room that's lit up is what you think you are and really, there's a whole bunch more that you don't even know is going on, right? And so, that part of you, it thinks it knows everything so it runs around and what happens is when you get a little bit of those wow moments happen, it stretches that, the lightness because really what we're doing here is bringing the consciousness to the unconscious is what we're doing. We're bringing light to the darkness. That's really all we're doing because when you— and your life and really anything in your life is a direct— the quality of it is a direct reflection of the amount of consciousness that you bring to it. Most of your suffering is because of unconsciousness. Like if you go look at it, it's like, "Well, no, I did that consciously!" Yeah, but why did you do it? Well, uh, and then all of a sudden you see this blind spot and you start shooting through this blind spot and you find out, oh, this is— oh, I did it because creepy Uncle Eddie clear back here. Yes, exactly! See, I would have never known that that the standard— I would have never known that that's still— but years and years of therapy, I hear this all the time, years and years of therapy and I thought that I was over it. Yeah, well, here we are. And so what happens is the ego goes— she goes, oh, I see what I'm doing. I'm looking at everything terrible. And then what happens with us folks that have been through, then all of a sudden I become terrible about feeling terrible. Now, I feel terrible because I'm creating the very thing that I feel terrible about and then I catch myself feeling terrible about feeling terrible and that's what I— guess what I do? Now, I'm terrible about being terrible about being terrible and the mind just spirals. I call it a shame spiral. You just— they just— it's like the first thing I tell people is pull back and go in your mind, just say Isn't that interesting? And to go to a position of curiosity, it's one of our— as a human, it's one of our superpowers is to get curious. You know, as monkeys, we go look at things. So, the first thought when you find yourself in that shame spot, like right now, if you're listening to this and you're going, "Oh, that's exactly what I'm doing! I'm beating myself about beating myself up about beating myself up!" Breathe! Isn't that interesting? Instead of doing that, instead of going, "Ah!" because most people don't have thoughts, most people's thoughts have them and they're caught in this train of thought and the train has left the station like a bullet train and it's headed straight to whatever worst case scenario that they create and they're living out of it over and over and over and they don't even know it. It's subconscious! It's just below the surface in there. It's like a per— this is the Personal Codex. There's this album that's just playing, this record playing in the background that's the worst song you've ever listened to in your life but you can't stop listening to it kind of thing. It's like that's what's going on and they don't even know it.

Yeah, it's absolutely true. That's, that's been my, my experience too. And that the feeling terrible about being terrible, feeling terrible, it's, it's like it and I was telling you, I deal with a lot of people in grief. And one of the big things about people that are in grief, there's always seems to be some level of guilt, even when there's really nothing objectively to be guilty about. From an outsider, I'll look at them and say, you've got You didn't do anything wrong, but we shame ourselves!

Yep! And we shame ourselves first because we believe that somehow the story that we're living in, because we're all living a hero's journey, a subjective experience of— if you think of every movie that's ever been, every show, every movie, every— there's only been one frame. It's called the hero's journey. Joseph Campbell called it the monomyth, right? Well, I think that's just— if you think about it, since the beginning of time, every culture, same story. Yep! Every culture, same story. Every human, same story. Isn't that interesting? Well, there's got to be a definite— like, that's one of the first threads that like, there's no way that could be an accident! Like, there's just no way! And that— because that's what we're living in our heads. We're looking for this. We've got this groove developed in us and so as soon as something happens, we go, "What did I do? What did I do?" And it's got to be about me because everything— we're living in a narcissistic society. Paul Levy called it the "Witico virus." We're all living in this narcissistic environment and I think it's all because we're all— we've all been traumatized. We're all living in grief and we're just managing. Most people don't build the ideal life. Most people are just managing the circumstances of what has been handed to them and now their head is down. And if I'm focused on circumstances because my brain is programmed, I'm working with this lady She's one of the top financial advisors in our country and she's working, working, working and she's exiting the business and as she— as a business owner exits, it's a different type of business. I mean, work with Tony, right? It's a different type of business when you're exiting and this trauma point, it keeps us— you know, it keeps us focused on— we're managing circumstances, managing circumstances. If I don't look up and look down and look at the horizon, now I'm in suffering and now I take that and I bleed that into the— to my personal life as well. And so what she's done, she's just become enamored by looking right at the problem. Well, if I look at the problem and I step over the problem because my programming, what am I going to do next? What's the next thing I focus on? What do I need to be looking for? If I'm problem-focused, what am I going to look for? Problems! Right! And you get what you focus on. So, because I'm focused on probably go into it like, this is— yeah, cute! Haha! But actually go into your life, into the subjective experience of your life and go, that's exactly what I do! I go, okay, now what's the next problem? And now what you're doing is just jumping from problem to problem and your experiences, there's nothing but problems because that's all you're looking for. So, consciousness bleeds right inside that smaller container and now you feel like you're stifled. You feel like you're stuck. That's because you're not building the ideal. You're not building what you want. It's two different parts of the brains that come online. When I'm managing circumstances versus building the ideal.

Yes! I love that, what you just said about— and we are— and this goes back to that prehistoric brain. We are built to look for problems. That's when we were in the jungle, you needed to see if a tiger was coming. You're not looking at the flowers and we still do that and you can convince yourself that nothing is right in your life and I've seen people that have done this.

I'll convince myself of it and then and then talk myself— I do this for a living! Like, I've been doing this for 22 years and for me it was life and death. You're locked in a basement, you have to figure it out kind of thing. Like for me, it was a must to figure out what was going on and I still get stuck in it. So, people need to understand that the root word for human being in Arabic is to forget. We forget! We forget what we're doing. We forget— I can remember I remember, I work with this medicine called ayahuasca. It's the strongest psychedelic on the planet. It's DMT and you know, again, I've worked with Tony. I work with geniuses throughout the world. You get to Tony Robbins, you know, who is arguably of our time, one of the best in this field, arguably maybe one of the best ever in this field, right? So, I'm working next to him. I built his business master and I've reached the end. Now what? Now what? Here I am still trapped in this. Basement, I'm getting— I mean, I found ways to get out of it but I still find myself tripping into it. Still haven't figured out quite what— I haven't got my hand on it yet. So like a monkey, have you ever seen how they trap monkeys in India? No, I haven't! Yeah! So in India, I got the video. You can go out to my YouTube page and check it out but in India, what they do is they take— they used to take this gorge and they would hollow it out and they would put a little hole in it, like enough to fit your hand in it and what they would do is they would put fruit in it and they walk into a field, monkeys be watching them do this and they just walk up and they tie this gourd to a tree and then they walk off and they don't even leave. They just kind of sit off a ways, a little ways and they wait. Monkeys being what monkeys do and that's what we are, right? We're just hairless monkeys. They'll walk up and they'll put their hand in the gourd and then they'll grab the fruit and they're going to pull it out because they made a fist, their hand doesn't fit it. It won't pull out anymore. Well, the monkey doesn't know that because the monkey can't see that his hand is what's catching. He thinks, as far as he knows, his hand is still the same size. The monkey doesn't have the mental— we're kind of like that monkey. We go in and we grab onto something and now we're caught and you can see they'll come up, they'll go to— he'll be gnawing on, biting on his arm trying to get, you know, he'll eat his arm off if he knew he'd get out and they'll just walk up, grab the monkey, tie it up, put him down and they'll set that monkey— I get the video. Set it right down, 2 or 3 other monkeys that just got caught doing exactly what he did, right? That's how— that's— and we are— that's what we are! So what we do is we catch on. Somewhere down there, I caught on to this 3-year-old trapped in a basement in my exist— inside my consciousness, inside my mind. But if you miss by an inch, you miss by a mile. I knew it was there. Everybody told me it was there, but I didn't know. I didn't know, know, right? So, I'm on my— I remember my journey with Mother. I remember going down, I remember coming up and it was like my second ceremony and I remember waking up. It's like waking up from a dream that you're not having, if that makes any sense. Like, imagine right now if you woke up, just like how would it be if you woke up if you weren't sleeping? That's what it felt like. And now I'm no longer standing in this grove, I'm standing— I'm sitting next to this female entity. We call her— if you've ever had the opportunity to meet that, we call her Mother AF. I'm not the only one to see this lady, right? And so I looked over and I'm like, "It's all a story?" She's like, "Yeah! It's all a story!" And she's kind of smiling like, "Yeah! Yes! Surprise!" You know? And I remember going back to sleep. I'm using air quotes here, going back to sleep because I really— what was happening was then I woke up again and I was in the grove. I was in this grove, it's daytime ceremony. I looked up and I saw all these little triangles, little eyeballs and it was really weird. I'm like, "Oh, that's weird!" I closed my eyes again and all of a sudden I woke up, quote unquote woke up again. Now I'm standing there next to Mother Aya again and I'm like, "Well, if this is all a story, why don't we— why do we forget? Why do we forget that we're telling?" She started laughing at me! She thought it was funny and at that time I didn't like, why is this? Why am I having a vision of some lady laughing at me because I'm asking her a question that I don't know the answer to? And it took me 18 ceremonies deep to realize that in my humble opinion, again, this is just my story that I'm living out of in my head. Again, my story and your story never line up, right? The story that I'm living out of my head is the reason why we forget is because that's what we were put here to do. We made the agreement to come here and forget what we're here to do and so the root word for human being is to forget and so I've got my hand on this thing that says I'm trapped but I've forgotten that it's back there. "But there it is, pulling me, holding me down to this feeling and I have to do that because the strongest force in our human condition is our identity." Like, as humans, we will do anything to stay consistent and persistent with how we identify ourselves, both good and bad. And so, if I've got this feeling of being trapped, I load that down into my psyche and say, "Okay! This is who I am. This is my existence. This is where I am!" Like when you're You boot the software that is the mind online, the first thing you go is "Okay! Where? Who am I?" Who am I is where am I at on the map? So when you go to like the mall, you've never been to, if you— a lot of us don't go to malls anymore, right? But if you go to a mall that you remember looking at the map and there was always— we needed to know 3 things, right? First, I needed to know where I was. You are here! That's the identity. This is I am, here's where I am! And now that I know where I'm at, I need to know where I'm going. There's Radio Shack, for those of us that remember Radio Shack, right? There's Radio Shack. If I'm here and Radio Shack is there, now I can navigate a course to get where I'm going, right? Without that "I am here," doesn't matter if I know where Radio Shack is or not. There's no way for me to create a strategy to get from where I am to where I'm going. This is just basic level stuff, right? Without a zero, you can't get to one because you don't know where you're at. Right? So then I'm trapped in a basement is my— it's the way I make meaning of my world. It's the way all of my decisions, all of my strategies, all of my information flows out of this basement that is trapped. Now, if I get too far away from feeling trapped, now I'm out in the ocean and I can't see the coast and I don't know what's where. I don't know which way to turn. I call it Dark Night of the Soul to D-NOTS, right? I don't know whether to go left, right, straight, forward. I don't know. This is how you get sucked into a hurricane. So, the mind doesn't do that. What the mind does is it stays up against the coast of the basement. So, there are times that I go, "Okay! Well, do you feel trapped?" "No, you're not trapped!" "Okay! Everything is good!" But notice that even in that feeling of everything being good, I'm still holding it up against that feeling of being trapped in the basement. It's only going to be— it's either going to be you're good or you're not! It's either good or keep doing this until you are good. Everything is based upon that crappy feeling, right? The problem isn't necessarily whether you do this, it's how do you do this and unraveling that and in business, it's a big deal! Like you can't, like again, Sandeep is a great example of that. You'll recreate your life inside your business but the other piece is that the velocity of change has sped up so great that what— just for humans, what's happened to us in 100 years is now happening in 10. Like, stuff is speeding up. What happened in 10 years is happening in 1. It's like new problem, new problem, new problem, right? Like, we can't continue to operate out of the same software that we've been operating out of because that— it didn't work back there. It's 75,000 years. Like, we've only been society for 6,000. 3.5 million years of programming. This programming that I think— my judgment is this programming that we have right now is the reason why we're suffering. We're going through this major shift in regards to our software.

We'll get back to Grief to Growth in just a few seconds. Did you know that Brian is an author and a life coach? If you're grieving or know someone who is grieving, his book Grief to Growth is a best-selling, easy-to-read book that might help you or someone you know. People work with Brian as a life coach to break through barriers and live their best lives. You can find out more about Brian and what he offers at www.grieftogrowth.com. Www.grief2growth.com, or text growth, G-R-O-W-T-H, to 31996. If you'd like to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/grief2growth, www.patreon.com/grief2growth. G-R-O-W-T-H to make a financial contribution. And now back to Grief 2 Growth.

Yeah, that's a, that's an excellent point. Because we do have these brains that were, that were developed for a different world. We're living in a completely different environment with this, this brain that's developed for, for fear and for survival and look for the worst. And it's, and it's making a lot of us miserable. I think it's what we feel, the disconnect and the the lack of meaning in life. I love what you said earlier, like it's like we're programmed for survival but we seek meaning. That's what people want!

We want meaning! Yep! We— that's the thing! I think the mind is originally designed for meaning. So we come online, we go "What does all this mean? What does this mean?" But then the deep— that it's been hijacked for survival again, over and over and over again. It's like, "Well, you can't get past this!" So then the mind goes "Okay, well then we need to survive first!" And then the third piece that becomes what I call BIOS level programming would be efficiency, right? Because the mind only has— right now, your mind takes about 20 to 25% of the caloric intake that you have goes to just processing thought, right? At some level, just to get the mind, the organ that is the brain to operate, you're talking 20% of your caloric intake. 20% of the food you eat every day goes to how much you think. That's the most energy intensive organ in the body. It's more than any other organ in the body and so to compensate for that, to get more thought, the mind's created what's called the default mode network, the DMN and what the DMN does is it says, okay, if this is the path to get there, it wants to go to overdrive. It's kind of like a zip file. I go, okay! I take the zip file and I go, okay! Trapped in the basement, we'll just use my trauma point for an example. We go, okay! Trapped in a basement, this is what that looks like. This is all the This is who you are in that. These are the words that you'll use, the way, the plot that you'll make out of that. Here's the deep coding meaning that you've got. Here's all the blueprints around how the world operates in that situation, that scenario. Here's all the emotions and energy that comes along. Here's what you can do, can't do. Here's all your decision-making options you've got and here's what kind of rituals do you have around that. That loads into what's called the default mode network. And then I'm walking along and all of a sudden something triggers me. As far as the triggers means that the song that's playing, the radio station that's playing in the background, right? What I find is when people are triggered and they go, "Now I'm triggered!" Right? I go, "Go into that trigger!" And we go into the trigger, I go, "Is it that you're just now feeling this or is that you already were feeling it? It's just that now you can't tune it out!" Right? Like the radio, the refrigerator in the kitchen. You ever had a refrigerator in your kitchen that was humming? What happens after it hums a certain length of time? You don't hear it anymore! You tune it out, right? So there's this tune out that happens but then all of a sudden, somebody comes in and says "refrigerator" and you go "Oh!" and now you can hear the humming like it's all of a sudden, now you can't hear it all of a sudden, like all of a sudden it just came on like— Right! Right! Right? That's what happens and so this Default Mode Network says something around the trauma and all of that file, That entire file comes forward and from my default mode network, it gets loaded into my nervous system and now I am metaphorically inside that basement but I don't know it! Right! Right! And the default, it's kind of like have you ever driven, you've been driving somewhere and you've driven there thousands of times and then you wake up and you're just there? Yeah! Right! You don't know how you got there? Yeah! That's because your default mode network, thank you! Thank you mind! Right! For doing what you need to do. If that didn't happen, If we didn't have a default mode network, you'd get hit by a bus every time you walked out. It's only a matter of time before he dies because your mind can't process that much information. Like, when you're sitting in a room full of crowded people or like if say you're walking along the street in New York and somebody you know comes in the crowd, it takes like the computer program, it's like 1,000 points that have to be taken into consideration for you to take that moving piece and process it and go, "Oh! That's Steven!" Yeah! Like, that's like 1,000 points! Like, that's massive computation! We're talking quantum level, you know, your mind is unbelievably powerful but that's a lot of data! So the default mode network takes anything that's automated and it zips it up so that you don't have to deal with it, so that you can have this higher functioning thought. The problem is, is you're standing on top of all that and you don't know it! Nobody's taught you! To look through the looking glass, right? So you have this glass case that's around you that's got all these patterns that have been etched in the glassing of what the world is. The problem is, is most people— there's only two types of thoughts. You have the thoughts that you think and then you have the thoughts that you're hearing yourself think. In other words, they're echoes of thoughts that have already been thought, right? Most people aren't listening. Most people aren't having new thoughts. What most people are doing is they're listening to thoughts that have already been thunked. I guess would be the past tense word of think, right? Yeah! So, the past has— they've already thunked those thoughts and because they've already thunked those thoughts and developed a pattern and meaning to it, that's etching on the glass. Well, over time what happens is you start living out of that etching thinking that— not completely unaware to the fact that you're living out of your etching and then that's projecting the shadow onto the world and you're thinking that it's the outside world but it's not, it's the etching in your glass and we want to do what we do in shadow work is we go, "Okay, you see that? Yep! That's you!" Oh, and now you— we call it owning your shadow. Now you can own it! "That is me! Exactly!" Now own it! Now that I own it, now I can see it and now I don't have to step in it. I have to live out of it! Yeah! I don't have to suffer out of it, right? And I think that the world needs to do more and more of this.

Yeah! And one thing I want to interject here because The word shadow work sounds dark, sounds scary, sounds like something I don't want to do. So I can— people, I think, turn away from doing the shadow work. But what we need to help people understand is you're miserable now.

You think you're avoiding it. I was just having this conversation with somebody Saturday. So we were You know, I do— past 2 years now, I've been doing psychedelic integration work with shadow work and just working with somebody that was just like, I don't want to do this. I don't want to go there. I don't want to. But isn't it like, okay, well, check your body though. Isn't it true that you're already going through it? I am. I am already going. All you're doing now is facing it. That's it. All you're doing now is looking at it and owning what you're already— but I don't want to do that. Isn't that interesting? You're still spending all this energy under Underground, they're spending more energy to maintain whatever it is. Yes! Right? And they're spending more energy maintaining it than they are just dealing with it and then moving it over and then also, the other piece is— so, working with somebody this Saturday and he had something happen to him when he was young where he was told not to have any intimate relations. So, there's this part of him that's just terrified to be in a relationship. Right? So now he can't figure out why he can't be in a relationship. We're now— and then he's now an adult. He's exiting a relationship and it's like, it's the same exit that he's been taking his entire life. He's like, I can't figure out why I keep getting the same exit. Well, he was building it up and he didn't even know it. Right? Same guy. I don't want to look at that but isn't it true that you're suffering now? Well, yeah! Okay. Well, how are you suffering now? Well, I always get this feeling like— okay! So you're feeling as though you need to be quiet, you need to be separate? Yeah! And how much of that energy, how much do you have to fight against that. Oh! What percentage of your mental power? Oh, 10%? Okay! And then this— it was like 30% of his energy was spent working his way out of the lie that he knew. No, you are good enough! No, you— like leaning against the lie that I'm not good enough. It took 30% of his energy just to work his way out of the hole. So, there's 30% of his mental capacity that he doesn't have and then the goal that he had down in there, the reason why he had learned to be not in intimate relationships because he felt so hard. He loved so deeply that he felt he needed to stay safe because he didn't want to hurt again. So now, we have this beautiful heart, this deep, almost genius level ability to connect with people but he's got the shadow that says, "If you do that, you're going to hurt!" So then, he's separate from that. So, not only is he losing 30% of his mental capacity, He's really missing his genius, which is the ability to connect. People will come in and they'll say, well, shadow is dark. And I think honestly, Brian, I think that it's very interesting to me when people— I got a client who said, I thought it was devil worshiping. What are you talking about? He's like, well, when you first mentioned shadow work, I almost didn't sign up because it was like, I'm not doing any devil worshiping stuff, but I knew that you'd worked for Tony and I had this interaction with you and I watched these videos. He said, "That's so— that's the only reason I signed up for your course, right? But now I know!" Because it's— you get this natural, like when you're thinking of shadow work, think of the aversion. What if that aversion weren't about shadow work? What if there was some part of you that was unconsciously saying, "Oh no! Don't look there!" Like, part of you came online as soon as you heard shadow work. There's a part of you that came online and said, "Wait a minute! Wait a minute!" You don't want to go there, right? Because the conscious mind does not want to go there. It wants— the first rule of shadow work is that we lie to ourselves first. You're lying to yourself.

Those, those shadow elements of ourselves tell us, I'm the one keeping you safe. I'm what's keeping you safe. This is, this is your coping mechanism. So when people hear this, they're like, you're trying to take that away from me.

Exactly, exactly. And addicts, you see the same thing with addiction. I'll be working with somebody in addiction and they'll go, I'll go, "I need you to quit that!" "Well, this is how I'm managing my trauma of being abused when I was 3 years old. You want me to get rid of my— the tool that I use that keeps me out of the basement?" Again, like this— their metaphorical basement, right? "You want me to stop doing this for that?" Oh no! They're not even willing— that's why harm reduction is the thing because you can't just take away somebody's— they're gonna have to have some kind of coping mechanism to deal with whatever the thing is that that the addiction is typically a symptom of a deeper-rooted problem. Not that I'm doing therapy! At no point do I— would I do it. To be clear, I don't have any answers. Like, it sounds like I got a lot of answers but the reality is, is I don't. I've got what I'm really, really like a genius at is questions. I get really, really curious really, really quick and I want to get you to the point to where you go, "Ah! That's why I'm doing what I'm doing!" And if I have an answer, Even if I know the answer, if I give you the answer, well, if you got a neuron that's firing, looking for the answers, like reaching for an answer, and then the answer is on the other side somewhere and I jump you from one neuron to the other, you don't make the connection yourself. Now, when you're in the situation, you're not going to get there because you're going to need me to tell you what to do so you can get— even though you know how to get there, I am in your strategy-making process. You have to come through me now to get to your answer. And now I've hobbled you. And most people are hobbled before they even know they can walk. And so, a good shadow guy doesn't have any answers but yes, shadow is the part of you that you hide, repress, and deny. It's not— that is not the dark aspects of you. Matter of fact, Marianne Williamson said, "Our deepest fear is not that we're inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we're powerful beyond measure." You're afraid of just how powerful you are. You just don't know it!

Yeah! I think that's an excellent point. I want to talk about— you mentioned Ayahuasca and you talked about Mother Ayahuasca and I— to To me, it's fascinating how psychedelics seem to have the ability to help people to heal. It was funny, I was just a few weeks ago, saw an interview with Will Smith with, um, uh, David Letterman, and he was talking about ayahuasca. And there's this, there's just this perception that, oh, I can't do drugs because those are, those are bad for you. But talk about psychedelics and talk about why you think that helps us to unlock some of this stuff.

Yeah, and I'm, and understand that I'm a and I spent a long time in 12-step program. I was Al-Anon, Alateen, Al-Anon, NA, AA, like you name it! If there is an A behind it, I probably joined it. Like, you know what I mean? I was looking because again, I was looking for the answer why am I— why do I keep going to this unconscious suffering, just keep creating the same suffering, same suffering over and over, right? And so the 12-step programs are really— they're a transformational tool but even the 12-step program, AA itself was created by a gentleman by the name of Bill W. Bill W., when he first started AA, he did what was called the belladonna cure. The belladonna cure was a psychedelic experience where they would put you through and he had this epiphany and that epiphany then, he then took the Oxford group and a couple other groups who put them together, created the Alcoholics Anonymous that we— the program that we now know. It wasn't meant to be a program that you kept coming to but then he then was— still suffered from severe depression, never did. And he ended up going and taking some LSD and he at that point wanted to add psychedelics to the AA program because he was certain that that was going to be— but the old-timers like, "Dude! Like, shut up, man! You're going to— you don't tell an alcoholic to take a chemical to stop taking chemicals. That doesn't make any sense!" Right? We need to understand the difference between drugs and medicine. Right? That's the difference. You'll never see, in my humble opinion, you'll never see— they'll never— I don't care how far down in the future you go. I don't care how embedded it becomes into our culture, there's never going to be a time where you go to a frat party and you see a kegger of Ayahuasca laying there. Like, people don't go there just to drink the tea, you know what I'm saying? It is painful. You don't go into that. Do not go into that blindly. Like, you need an integration coach. You need somebody there sitting with you. You're going to want integration in the background. The Western mind is not— the amount of lies that we've been taught unconsciously processed are amazing, right? And I don't want to go too woo on us, right? But what I found is psychedelics are a non-specific focus enhancer, right? So, whether I'm working with businesses that want to innovate or whether I'm working with somebody like me that's dealing with deep-rooted trauma or whether I'm dealing with a spiritual— somebody looking to be more spiritually enlightened, what ayahuasca— I work specifically with plant medicine because I have my own reasons for that but psychedelics, what they do is they're a non-specific focus enhancer. So when you set your intention, "I want to help me understand, help me heal, help me do..." What happens is the medicine comes online and wherever your focus goes, your energy flows. This is like this not just with psychedelics, just in general, wherever your focus goes, your energy flows. But when you bring in your focus and you add the medicine, the medicine tends to be a focus enhancer. You go from being able to focus on it times 2 to focus on it times 2,000 and all of a sudden, all your entire brain lights up and you can make connections in your mind that you could have never made because you have these deep-rooted patterns of the way— again, if I told you to look around the room and find red, you wouldn't get blue. But if I told you right now to look around the room again, let's try this again. Look around the room and find the color red. I said, close your eyes and I go, how much stuff did you see now that was blue? "Oh, I saw a couple things." Yes, because your mind said, "Oh, there's also this other thing that may come into play!" And so now your mind is noticing more of— it's noticing the red and the blue and it might not be causing the pink so much, right? That right there is adding psychedelics but times 2,000 because now you're coming in and the mind is going, "Now look all around you!" And you're like, "I didn't even know any of this stuff was here!" Right? Psychedelics breaks us out of our our rote programming, or helps us break out of this rote programming that we've been dealing with and focuses us inward and goes, okay, how did you get there?

Yeah. You know, it's funny, when you were talking, you said, you just briefly said, I don't want to go too woo-woo on this. And I do, because this is, this is what I do. I, my spiritual eyes is a deep part of what I do when I work with people. And I believe one of the issues we have in the world is We have forgotten who we are. We have forgotten we do this incredible, powerful being. We've forgotten while we're here and I could see Mother Ayahuasca like laughing at you like, "Yeah, you signed up for this!" Exactly!

It's like the 18th ceremony, it was like, "I got it!" It was like the reason why was because you asked, this was your idea! Like this wasn't my idea. I'm just here helping you. This was all you and every teacher that I've ever come to always points me back to that. This is your— this is you! This is you! Any teacher worth their salt, any teacher that— and go in and check yourself and see if it's true— any teacher that's ever been worth anything for you, that's ever helped you grow at all, has always pointed you back into yourself. So, we do this process called Shadow Ceremony. It's the Shadow Practitioner Level 1 is what it is and it's— what we do is we go through the cave to touch your shadow. What is the part of you, you hide, repress, and deny? But we're not going into the shadow just to go— we're not going into the mind just to get to the mind. We're shooting past the shadow to get to what I call your well, right? There's a part of you that stuff doesn't come— like all the things that you have, the genius that is Brian, it hasn't come to you. It's not like something out here came to you and now you have this gift. That's not how things have come. They haven't come from you. Brian is the genius. No! If you go and look at the genius, like the real genius stuff in you, Didn't come from you, didn't come to you, it came through you! And what we want to do is we want to connect to that well and what that does is that redefines— we talked about the axis mundi, we were offline— the center of balance, your center of the universe. Most people are taking! There's a book out called, it's an audio called "The Erotic and the Holy" by Mark Gaffney and he says, "Are you giving? Are you taking? Are you open to receive?" And whenever I go to a situation and I'm taking, I go into the place where you're suffering. I don't care what it is. Just go into the place where you're suffering right now and think about that place and go, "Okay! In that moment, am I giving or am I taking?" And if you're suffering, 90% of the time you're taking and if you're not, that other 10% will be, "Well, are you open to receive?" "I'm not open to receive!" "Okay! Well then, that's why you're not feeling this moment. You're not open to receiving because you're in a condensed... I call it a condensed state. That's why you're suffering!" you're never going to be able to receive because you're trying to take. As soon as I go to giving, then my natural react— my body then goes— it knows because at the core level, it knows that that's the only way to receive. I know by giving, then I become open to receive. So, this is about shifting that and when I say that, it's— again, we talk about the woo. I come from Tony Robbins, very strategic. If you do this, that will happen, right? And I kind of traveled down and started dealing with these plant medicine people. And it's like they came from the woo and they're coming this way. It's like we kind of cross— you probably run into this, right? You kind of cross paths with them. So, I've been very conscious to try to not get so far into the woo that people that are in the— still in the strategic end of life, still in the, you know, the construct— I want to be able to plug— make sure that the two plug. I want— I try as hard as I can to stay right at that crossroads.

Perfectly understand what you're saying and I'm actually taking a program right now, coaching program that's very similar with what you're doing with the shadow work and understanding our shadow. We call them saboteurs. All these things that are part of our minds that tell us the lies. And then the sage is like the true part of us. And it's funny, because as I'm like, I did a 6-week thing with them. And now I'm 12 weeks into the coaching aspect, I'm learning how to coach it. And I keep looking at this guy, and I'm like, this is also deeply spiritual. This is, this is Buddhism, you know, this is Hinduism. But he's framing it in a scientific way, because the Western mind doesn't want to accept the woo. And when I hear people talk about like Mother Ayahuasca, and it was really interesting, I was interviewing a lady who did psychedelics, and I don't think it was ayahuasca, it was somewhere in Brazil. She'd done this thing, and she looks up on the mountain, she sees these beings, you know, going up and down the mountains. Well, you think, okay, well, that's right, because you're having a subjective experience and you're seeing these in your head. And the guy goes, oh no, everybody sees them. And I find that fascinating, that, you know, there's, there's something objective about this. I believe. Oh yeah!

I'll go in and I'll— every Saturday morning I'm going in and I'm working like I commit a certain length of time studying this stuff, right? Because it's like, this stuff really works! Like, it got me there, right? And it's like over and over, it's like I'm not going to tell you and then on the back end they all— and they all— everybody's saying the same thing! They might not see the same thing but whatever they're seeing seems to be pointing to the same— might be a different definition. They were like this and over here they're like no, they were like that but there was still something there! Like something was there, obviously, if we're all seeing the same thing, there must be something like this there, right? And yes, there are certain patterns that the gentleman that you're learning from, I developed, I took 20 years, I developed this framework called— I call it the Personal Codex. You're talking about saboteur, that's your identity. A saboteur cannot have a plot, a narrative. They can't have chatter and like right now, just in your mind, say hello. Like some dude up there just said hello, right? You've got a narrative right now. That guy's always talking., right? And what he does is he tells himself a plot and then he goes, what does that mean? And then creates a story. This is what happened! Once that happens, then it gels down into the blueprint. This is what the world is! That blueprint then gets loaded and then I have an emotion over it and that loads into my decision-making process, my strategies, and then my behaviors and my actions and then this goes underwater and then we act out of it! These are— this is— you go into just anybody, any Again, any training worth its weight, we start to see these similarities. We start to see these, I guess, we identify— you're talking about the 7 Core Archetypes, you're talking about like— and I never taken this, whatever training you're talking about, never took it, but here it is! We all have this common belief. We might call it identity. We might call it this. We might call it Spiral Dynamics, sits at the identity level. Disc Management sits at the identity level. 16 Levels of Consciousness sits at the identity level. Like this, obviously, this is— We're all agreeing that this is a thing. Let's have a conversation about that. Like, you know what I mean? It's like interesting, but if you go too far out there into the woo, then those people that have shadows that their mind doesn't want them to deal with, that, then that's the excuse that they give themselves. Yes, yes. Right. To not lean into it. So I got to be— we got people like us, like, am I going to go so far out there that the people that could get help from me aren't going to reach out because they're going to use the excuse that I'm too woo?

Yeah, no, I, yeah, I perfectly understand. And I understand, you know, depends on who your audience is. And like I said, that for me, I come from a religious background. So I come from fundamental Christianity. So I look at this stuff, and I'm, and I come from a spiritual belief. And I believe that we came here as beings to have this experience, like, like Mother Ayahuasca told you. And I think that's, to me, that's really important to always keep in mind, because, okay, so the story my daughter passing away. You know, I could tell myself a story that I'm just a biological robot here by accident. And that's it. And so when we die, we die, lights out, nothing, nothing more. That's the story I can tell myself, which means my daughter's death is a great tragedy, because I'll never see her again. Or I could tell myself that we're spiritual beings, you're having a temporary experience, and that she's still with me. And this is why her picture is behind me right now. And that I will see her again. And there's evidence for both of those stories, right? There's— you can choose which one you want to believe. The latter one helps me a lot. And I believe— and there's a lot of evidence for it as well. It's not just— it's not just I'm telling myself the story. So when I work with my clients, I'm like, you don't have to believe this, but just, just try it on to see if it works for you. Yep.

And, you know, here's the reality: at the end of the road, you're gonna die. Yeah, you know, I'm gonna die, you're gonna die. Everybody on this call is going to die. Like Brian D Smith, nobody's going to remember your name. The country is going to fall. The sun is going to explode. The planet's going to die. Other planets are going to be formed. New civilizations are going to come up that don't even know that Earth was a thing. At the end of the road, nothing that you do here matters. And I tell that to somebody and they go, "Oh man! That's really a— that's a really terrible way to look at life!" I'm like, "Well, why? That's the truth!" "Well then, why would we live?" Okay, well, just for a second in time, feel the air on your skin. Yeah! Feel the temperature, like feel your butt in the chair. If you're driving down the road, notice that you're driving. Like, be where you are now! Are you in a house? How many people are in that house with you? Like, just really allow yourself for a brief period of time, be here now and then allow the story of what happened— daughter, all that— slip away. Let allow tomorrow, what you need to get done, all that stuff slip away and just allow yourself for just a moment to be here now! Feel that right there! What are you feeling? That's all that's important! Ever! At the end of the day, how do I feel? How do I make others feel? How do I— do I bring light into the— am I living out of love or am I living out of fear? I call it a D-Night, Dark Night. Most people that— especially because of your— what you— the content that you offer is so profound for somebody that's in a what I call a D-Night, a Dark Night of the Soul. It's like, am I coming— ask yourself when you're in that fear, and where you're ruminating, am I coming from fear right now? Is it so I'm afraid of something? And then in your mind, just say, well, what would love say? Yeah. And listen. What was that answer? And you'll find that it's soft. Typically love doesn't— like fear comes in, what fear does is fear busts through the door and says, you need to run! Like, run! Like that, right? It's loud. It takes up space. It demands that you get everything else out of the way. Love doesn't do that. It kind of walks in and it's all soft and it's like, "Just let everything be!" And it's so simple and it's so matter of fact that our mind goes, "That's— there's no way that that's the answer!" But part of you knows that's the truth and it's hard for us as humans to break out of the mind and into the truth and so we look at that and we go, "Uh-uh! That's too scary! That's too dark! I'm not doing that shadow work! That's devil work! It's true shit! Stay away from it!" And we go, "Oh, I trust that! That sounds right!" And we continue to manage the circumstance because we don't want to deal— better to deal with the demon that you know than to raise the demon that you— what if I let go of this and there's something? What if I let go of this meaning that I made about my daughter dying? If I let go of this to reach for something greater, I don't know that I can take another pain that's greater than this. I'd rather manage this fear than the pain, the suffering that comes along and I can't imagine. So that we're clear, I can't imagine. I would— I think that that would crush me. I really do! Like, I know that would crush me for a brief period of time. I know there'd be no doubt. I don't know that I would recover from it. That's my fear, right? So better to deal with that demon. We're managing that. There's no way that I would be able to deal with a bigger demon. Like in your reality, again, in the subjective experience of it, there's some part of you that goes, "Oh yeah! That's true! That's probably the most painful thing that you've ever had to go through! I can't imagine anything even close to that!" And so it's like, "Why would I ever risk giving up whatever meaning?" And you've had to work through that part of you and you go into your subjective experience and you can go, "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!" Right? It's like that piece right there has been the piece for you. That's the healing piece! Yeah! Is letting go of that!

Yeah, and that's, you know, it's funny because so many times as we're talking, you were using the word letting go, and that's, that's the hard part for us humans. And it goes back to your monkey thing. We can't let go of things. That's what, that's what keeps people stuck in religion. That's what keeps people stuck in a materialistic mindset. It's just keep us stuck in everything because we're like, okay, well, this is, this is working for me, you know. And I've seen people— I, I post a lot of near-death experiences on my, on my channel, and you talked about ayahuasca, and I think there's a lot of similarities between those. But the Christians will come to me and say, this can't be true, it's not in the Bible, it can't be true. They're just so scared to even consider.

They're not looking deep enough. First off, they're not looking deep enough because as a Christian, it's all there, it's all there, it's all there. You're just looking at it in the way that your mind is telling you to look at it. You're not looking at it in a way that— it's typically a 2mm shift, right? Because you, you, you, you mentioned, you said that the letting go That's a core level. If you go into the Bible, you'll find it. It's deep level. Mother Aya, in all of her— all of my work with her, that's the answer. Letting go and love. Letting go and love. It's always an opening up. Any area where you're suffering, something you're not opening up, something you're not letting in, something you're not accepting, something you're not letting go of, something you're not— there's some compression. There's some holding down. There's some pinching that's happening in your life. And that's what's causing your suffering.

Yeah, yeah. And you're right, it is there in the Bible. It's right. It's all Jesus talked about— loving and letting go. Just, just—

and yet, and yet we get wrapped up into the— and, and whatever we get wrapped up in, it's like, that's not what he was saying. Like, you know, that's not what he was saying. Well, it was not what he's saying over here, but over in this area here that it's gonna be hard to actually implement it, that's not really what he meant. No, he meant it especially when it was hard. And typically where it's hard is this area here. Where my suffering sits because if I let go of that, I'm going to have to trust. I'm going to have to have faith, real faith. People tell me I'm a Christian. I go, "Do you believe in God?" "Yes." "Well then, why do you keep acting like you don't believe in God?" And the problem I think, Brian, is because our society as a societal level— I don't get— I don't want to get— is sick. It's not Big Brother. I don't want to go into that. We are programmed to disconnect. We are programmed for axis mundi. The space that they put between commercials is called filler. The television show itself is called filler. They're just going from space to pace and for me to make you a consumer, you have to want something. You have to feel like you need something. You have to feel as though your axis mundi is out there, not in your chest where it belongs. If I get this car, I'll be good enough. If I have this drink, I'll feel better. If I do this, I have to feel as though I'm not something for me to feel like I need something and then I'm taking, I'm reaching for something and as soon as you see yourself reaching for something, well, that's suffering! What is that about? And so, we've been programmed as a society to run left and our religion and our beliefs and everything in the core level that we know is say, "Go right!" And so, we need to be able to disconnect from that long enough for all of us to wake up so we can, "Okay! Can we change some of this? Can we change the channel here?" And everybody goes, "Yep! Let's change the channel!" And then we can all change it together. It's not the guy, the guy that the Republicans shouting at the Democrats isn't going to fix anything. The Democrats shouting at the Republicans isn't going to fix anything. That's just more of the same. It's you projecting your demon on somebody else. They're trying to eat me! No, they're trying to eat me! No, they're trying to eat me! And that's the projection that again, I go down and I see it every time. I can't not see it now. It's the projection that you've been taught COVID's chasing us and now we feel like we're getting eaten. So we have to find— our mind has to find somebody that's trying to eat us. And so we go— when you learn about spiral dynamics, we go from striver driver, which is what most America is down. We go down into the blues, which is the rules, the orders, the tribal stuff. And we go, okay, if this is my tribe, then what's the tribe trying— oh, the Democrats are trying to eat me. Oh, the Republicans, they're trying to— that we see racism. It's gone. It's all tied into this shadow. Yeah, that nobody wants to look at.

Yeah, that's why the work you're doing is so important. I love it so much. I could talk to you all day, but we need to start to think about wrapping up, and I want to give you a chance to talk about what your offerings are, um, because I know you've got an app and I'm fascinated. I want to hear about that and what about your other stuff as well.

Yeah, so I have a— I have an app. If you go to your phone, you go to— right now it's 30 Day Mental Cleanse. MasteringChange.com is my website, MasteringChange.com. So we have an app right now that will allow you the ability to go— we have a 30-day mental cleanse process. It's a 30-day cleanse where we wipe out at the plot level, at the second influence point of your— what I call your personal codex. Go in how to grab the thread. A thread turns into a string, string turns into rope, rope attached to a chain, yank the chain, anchor will come up, boat will leave the harbor, right? It's a 30-day process where you can go in and practice shadow work on your own. Like, you don't need somebody, but if you want some support, We do weekly— we have these weekly mastermind groups where you'll check in on this mental cleanse process once a week and it's phenomenal! I'm adding psychedelic integration stuff. I'm adding an intro to shadow work stuff. I'm adding relationship stuff. Like, that's where to go to get everything that I'm loading right now. I also have a— there's a program if you go to shadowceremony.com, you need some deep— I'm going to need some— I need some support around this. Go to shadowceremony.com. We only do 25 people at a time. So, it's a small group but when we do it, it's— we're going to go right to it! Like, there's no hiding. You could resist. That's not why you came, kind of thing. We're going to go right down into the very core of your suffering and you're going to pull it up and you're going to deal with it in the room over a weekend. You will touch a piece of your shadow and then we'll connect you to your core. You're going to develop a mission and develop purpose. You're going to develop insight. You're going to understand what your superpower is. Like, we're going to do that over the course of 3 days. It's a deep dive kind of thing. And then I do some one-on-one coaching as well. So masteringchange.com, or you go to shadowceremony.com, that'll all get you there.

Awesome. Stephen, it's been really fascinating talking to you. I really appreciate your energy, your wisdom, your just being so forthright about everything. So for people that sometimes people listen, they don't see it. So it's Stephen Tuohy, T-W-O-H-Y-G. And the website again is masteringchange.com, where you can find out more information, and shadowceremony.com. Anything you want to say as we wrap up today?

No, man! I appreciate what you're doing. Most importantly, if you're listening here and you're suffering, just take a breath! Take a breath and give yourself permission just in this moment to just breathe and you know, remember who you are! Remember that you're God having a human experience right now and what if everything in your universe happened for a reason and it served you? Yeah!

Awesome! Awesome. Have a great rest of your day.

You as well. Thank you, brother.

Thanks for listening to Grief to Growth. Brian hopes that you find this episode helpful and will come back for future episodes. Brian's bestselling book, Grief to Growth: Planted, Not Buried, is a great resource for anyone who is coping with grief or knows someone who is. If you enjoy the podcast and would like to support it, There are 3 things you can do to help. The first is to share the podcast with someone that you think it will help. The second is to go to iTunes, rate and review the episode. The third way you can support the podcast is by becoming a patron. Head over to www.patreon.com/grief2growth. That's P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com/grief2growth. Grief, the number 2, growth, and sign up to make a small monthly donation. Patrons get access to exclusive bonus content and knowledge that you are helping to spread the message of Grief 2 Growth. For more about Brian and Grief 2 Growth, visit www.grief2growth.com.

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